How We See: Objective and Subjective Means
Read this section for more on the differences between objective and subjective viewing. Think about how these factors, as well as other aspects that make us individuals, play a role in shaping our personal and social subjective responses to a work of art.
Until now, we have looked at artworks through the most
immediate visual effects: what we see in front of our eyes. Now, let's begin to break down some barriers to find specific meaning in art,
including those of different styles and cultures.
To help in this journey, we must learn the difference between looking and seeing.
To look is to get an objective overview of our field of vision.
Seeing speaks more to understanding. When we use the term "I see," we
communicate that we understand what something means. There are some
areas of learning, particularly psychology and biology,
that help form the basis of understanding how we see. For example,
the fact that humans perceive flat images as having a "reality" is very particular. In contrast, if you show a dog an image of another
dog, it does not growl or wag its tail because it cannot perceive flat images as containing
any meaning. You and I have developed the ability to "see"
images.
In essence, there is more to seeing than meets the eye. We must consider a cultural component in how we perceive images and
do so in subjective ways. Seeing is partly a result of cultural
biases. For example, when those from industrialized
cultures see a parking lot, they can pick out each car immediately. People from remote tribal cultures (who are unfamiliar with
parking lots) cannot.
Gestalt
is the term psychologists use to explain how the brain forms a whole image from
many component parts. For instance, our understanding of gestalt, in
part, explains
how we have learned to recognize outlines as contours of a solid
shape. In art, for example, this concept allows us to draw "space" using
only lines.
The following websites have some fun perceptual games from psychology and
science about how we see, along with further explanations of
gestalt:
Saylor Academy Knowledge Check
Source: Christopher Gildow, http://opencourselibrary.org/art-100-art-appreciation/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.